Mr. Brightside wrote:This just occurred to me - "Pod People" ends with Aggie asking Lisa to bring up "Eroica." Probably the most famous thing about Eroica is its dedication and undedication to Napoleon. Given the sort of garbled slacktivism of the rest of their conversation, was the shape of the arc between Aggie and Lisa ever meant to reflect this somehow?

In a very general sense. Eroica is a hurray-for-my-hero-in-public-service tune, the sort of thing Aggie might have written for Obama in 2008 if her talents ran in that direction, and a similar optimism runs through her and Lisa's new friendship. (I don't think she'd retract her Obama poems in 2013, incidentally, but she'd prefer not to recite them or talk about them. Of course, Aggie hates anything she wrote more than a year ago anyway.) Like many of their generation, they're defining their identities through music, and unlike their parents, they don't care so much whether the music originated from their contemporaries.

I have a question based on a currently-running thread: had Marshall broken up with Karen after what happened in the gym shower, would the Popsicle War still have happened? How would her actions have differed?

Doc Harleen wrote:I have a question based on a currently-running thread: had Marshall broken up with Karen after what happened in the gym shower, would the Popsicle War still have happened? How would her actions have differed?

Wow, I let this one go for quite a while. I'm gonna try to do better about this, but I will say for sure that my Tumblr (http://t-campbell.tumblr.com/) is a better way to get a quick response these days.

Had Marshall broken up with Karen, Karen would undoubtedly have absorbed the wrong lesson from it. She was still focused obsessively on "am I physically attractive or not." However, I don't think losing Marshall would break her completely. By "Celebrity Poker Showdown," she had clearly gained enough confidence and brazenness to turn complete strangers into dripping, quivering wax puppets of lust: she'd find someone else to gratify her sexual ego.

The boy who tormented her in the early "Popsicle War" flashbacks who ended up worshipping her seems like a good candidate. Frankly, that relationship would probably make her worse: she'd tease him and enjoy every little demonstration of her power over him, and finally end up dumping him after "breaking him in" completely. Her relationship with Marshall was informed by gratitude over how he helped her transform (and simply because he's a boy, he was not a potential rival). The theme of this new relationship would be revenge. "You know that girl you hang out with? Leave this fake dog doo in her locker and I'll show you how to French."

Would that gratify her need for revenge, to the point where she wouldn't need to "neutralize" Penny any more? Doubtful. Penny still represented a threat to her, the genie who gave her power but could take it away at any time, and the girl who befriended her out of guilt after humiliating her first. Without Marshall around to at least promote her better nature a bit, Karen might've fallen a bit faster but done more damage before she burned out. So yeah, I think the Popsicle War would've changed in some ways but it wouldn't have been avoided.

Mr. Brightside wrote:Also, is Caylee Canadian? Has she ever gone by another name?

If this is a Gisele reference, it's pretty hard for me to imagine a wild college life for someone who found her guy in high school and who's still with him today.

Heh, guess where Aggie gets her tendency to take things too seriously.

...I know this is something of a necropost, but the way T took this seemed somehow, well... perverse, and while I originally didn't want to derail the questions thread (again), it sort of built up, so, er, and I've already sort of said this, but...

Mr. Brightside wrote:Also, is Caylee Canadian? Has she ever gone by another name?

If this is a Gisele reference, it's pretty hard for me to imagine a wild college life for someone who found her guy in high school and who's still with him today.

Heh, guess where Aggie gets her tendency to take things too seriously.

...I know this is something of a necropost, but the way T took this seemed somehow, well... perverse, and while I originally didn't want to derail the questions thread (again), it sort of built up, so, er, and I've already sort of said this, but...

...it was meant as an Avalon reference.

Ah, well, sorry! I haven't thought about that strip in ages. "Celidh" is an interesting name for sure, but these days the sound of that name makes me think more of Firefly.

This is going to be a bit of a rant, but I've been meaning to ask this for a while. What on earth is a quiche-cake?

That term just confuses me. A quiche is a custard-like egg creation, where as a cake is a thing of flour and crumb (well, mostly... more on this later). The two just don't meet up in my mind. I mean, small-quiches would be best described as quiche-tartlets in the q-first paradigm. Quiches are typically of the pie family, which has an implication about the nature of it's crust (again, not very cakelike). The pie-ness of a quiche is pretty important. I mean, there are apple cakes, but they don't really strike me as apple-pie-cakes. A lemon meringue cake makes sense, with a thick lemon curd layer and the cake itself 'frosted' in meringue, but that doesn't really scream "pie". But beyond the pie angle, the specific texture of a quiche seems central to what it is.

That said, it's also good to expand on the word cake. There's cheese cake, which is quite unlike, say, a typical Duncan Hines boxed grain-based cake. And there are also crab cakes, potato cakes, risotto cakes, where a thing quite uncakelike is formed into a small patty and fried crispy. Cake as shape (non-food link here, don't want to put anyone off), rather than culinary item. That doesn't strike me as working for quiche in a food-science perspective; I don't think the ingredients of a quiche could be made to sit up in a pan and cook as something like a risotto cake would be cooked. Maybe a crustless quiche from a muffin tin could be called a "cake" just from physical form alone. That's probably the most realistic option that isn't a misnamed tartlet.

Or perhaps they are more akin to a pudding cake, where it's mostly a cake, but has a wetter, richer texture. As such, a quiche cake would be an extra egg-rich cake, with cheese, vegetables, and perhaps meat also incorporated. It would set-up much as a conventional flour cake, but be savory and dense from eggs.

As you can see, I've spent entirely too much time thinking about this for far too long.

The notes of this paradoxalist do not end here, however. He could not refrain from going on with them, but it seems to us that we may stop here. - Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground (trans. C. Garnett)

Interesting word round-about too. A form of the root word splits off and typically refers to a custard pastry, which is unlike the general English usage of the root word, but then reunites with a third fork from the root based on shape and density. What a beautiful thing language is.

The notes of this paradoxalist do not end here, however. He could not refrain from going on with them, but it seems to us that we may stop here. - Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground (trans. C. Garnett)

Not sure if this has been asked before, but how much had Lisa and Stan discussed relationship status and intended future before going off to college, before the QUILTBAG turned-into-a-breakup call? "Guilt-free pipe cleaning" was at least a year before college, so a lot could have changed in that time. Or not.

The notes of this paradoxalist do not end here, however. He could not refrain from going on with them, but it seems to us that we may stop here. - Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground (trans. C. Garnett)

thebitterfig wrote:Not sure if this has been asked before, but how much had Lisa and Stan discussed relationship status and intended future before going off to college, before the QUILTBAG turned-into-a-breakup call? "Guilt-free pipe cleaning" was at least a year before college, so a lot could have changed in that time. Or not.

They'd definitely said that they were always going to be no more than fuckbuddies, but, well, Lisa meant that a bit more than Stan, I think. Ultimately, buried parts of both of them wished that it'd turn into something more, which is why letting go of Stan hurt Lisa like it did. But Lisa was always more realistic than Stan about their ability to become more than that.

"The Best of Enemies" (from the 4th strip on) through "The Last Days of Summer"

"Live Free of Dye" through "Drama Queens" (first three strips)

"The Last Summer of Youth"

And because "The Last Summer of Youth" takes place before senior year, this would mean that when the comic opens, the main characters are right at the end of their freshman year.

As for teenage characters who were in a different year from most of the cast: Marshall was one (Charisma mentions in "June" he's leaving for Columbia in the fall) and Meg was the other (Penny and Fred attend her graduation ceremony, also in "June").

Alice's was the answer I should've given, for sure. The fact that I didn't, and showed off an embarrassing gap or three in my memory, tells you how remote Penny and Aggie has been from my thoughts this year. Considering something I just received, it's time for a quick reread of my own. More on this in the next couple of days.